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Twelve Habits of Happy, Healthy People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Your Inner Peace

Every damn time someone in my facebook feed posts something like this, I click it. Every damn time.

We all have this facebook friend, right? People you genuinely love and admire. People you like hanging out with. People you invite to your birthday parties. You know. Actual friends. Until you’ve clicked links exactly like thisagain and again and again. For YEARS. And all of a sudden, you start to wonder if this is some elaborate hoax, if you’ve actually just been reading the same article over and over.

It’s not like I have anything against happiness, or success, or meditation, or yoga, or being nice, or smiling more, or eating healthy, or losing weight, or being your best you, or embracing the day with a positive attitude. Those all sound great. Honestly, they do. And there are some really smart, simple truths to be found in all of those articles. There truly are.

It’s just that I have a problem with being told to do all of those things by skinny blonde ladies laughing on a beach wearing yoga pants.

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge. Next time you read one of these articles, I dare you not to play Inspirational Photo Bingo:

Don’t believe me? Compiling these photos took LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES.

I can’t fucking remember the last time I pranced around a tropical island paradise waving a white scarf around my head as a professional photographer snapped a picture, but I bet if I did, I’d be a whole lot happier too.

Below please find my version of this article, that I want to share with you, the internet. May it bring you all the inner peace you can cram into your backpacking gear right before downward dogging it atop that mountain at sunrise.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

Seriously, do you want that burger? Then just fucking eat a burger. Don’t be gross about it, and don’t eat a burger three meals a day. But I beg you, women and image-conscious male humans of the world, stop beating yourself up about it and just eat the fucking burger.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

Have good friends. Call them. Complain a little. That’s what friends are for. Return the favor. Don’t be a shitty friend.

Learn how to laugh about farts. Fart more. Laugh about it.

Be incessantly curious about the world around you! Experience art, science, beauty, and nature! But stop beating yourself up on those nights when you just want to sit your ass on the couch and watch reruns of Friends.

Smile when you feel like smiling. Laugh whenever you fucking feel like laughing. Pro tip: Being told to ‘laugh more’ is not going to make you laugh more. Being told to ‘smile more’ is not going to make you smile more.

Make time for yourself. After you’ve run that 5K, started a load of laundry, harvested your organic vegetable garden, run to the bank, paid the bills, dazzled everyone with recipes that are cost-effective, healthy, and delicious, thought of something witty and clever to share with your social networking site, caught up on current events and politics, and cleaned all of the house, that special hour set aside just for you is so critical to your well-being.*
10. Do whatever the fuck you want.
11. Don’t care what other people think. Unless they’re right. In which case, fucking humble yourself enough to listen to them.
12. Do. Whatever. The Fuck. You Want.

Do what you want. Be your damn self. Don’t be a terrible person. Be nice to others. Be supportive of your friends and allow yourself to give them the benefit of the doubt when they want to try something new, like rescuing shelter dogs, or making performance art in the nude, or dating terrible people. They’re your friends and you love them, and if they suck, stop being their friend. Show up for work. Pay your bills. Find some fucking purpose in your life, and figure out a way to share that purpose with others in a way that isn’t sanctimonious and doesn’t involve a picture of a woman laughing at an empty beach. Smile because something makes you smile. Laugh because you’ve surrounded yourself by people who make you laugh, and they’re funny fucking people, and you’re happy to be with them. Dance because you’re drunk at a big dance party with your friends and Michael Jackson is playing, not because ‘no one is watching.’ Everyone is watching. We’re at a fucking party. That’s how parties work.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

And the next time one of you has the kind of spare cash around to take a prancercise vacation to a tropical island, for the love of all that is holy please bring me with you. I am excellent at waving scarves around but even better at buying drinks with tiny umbrellas.

*And I don’t even HAVE KIDS! Or a husband! Or a boyfriend! I can’t even imagine how condescending that advice must feel to working moms. As someone who works all the time and can barely remember which day of the week the trash gets taken out: making time for yourself seems like one of the cruelest bits of advice of all. I’ll make plenty of time for myself. ONCE I FINISH ALL OF THE THINGS.

1,204 thoughts on “Twelve Habits of Happy, Healthy People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Your Inner Peace”

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Brilliant. I told someone that I didn’t make a new year resolution for 2016-aside from just being better. A wonderfully vague mixture of being focused and going with the flow. The person gave me a worried look, obviously unimpressed by my vagueness 😄 I enjoyed reading the article 👏🏾

I loved this! “Today is not about resolutions or creating promises to your being to appease others. Today is about taking another first step in honoring who you are and who you continually evolve to be.” – my thoughts on New Year’s Day. Although, admittedly, it may have sounded a lot more interesting tossing a few do what ever the fuck you wants in there 🙂 🙂

Despite the fact that I do yoga and meditate every now and then (however no scarf waving or sunset down dogging) and try to stay happy with smiles and laughter (although I can have the most tremendous strops and tantrums) I found your post highly entertaining and extremely relevant to the way things are on FB! And now I’m off to do whatever the f**k I want.

U got me on the hook and reeled me in. Very funny and good advice. I am a mom. I do exactly what u advise, only it’s all played out in my head, only to be jolted back into reality by one of my kiddos. Hey, I gotta start somewhere, right?

You do need to focus on yourself. To do what makes you happy. Striving to be better, while also allowing yourself a break is so important not only to physical health, but mental health. And I agree, those “perfect people” can be so condescending in their approach to helping others.

“As someone who works all the time and can barely remember which day of the week the trash gets taken out: making time for yourself seems like one of the cruelest bits of advice of all. I’ll make plenty of time for myself. ONCE I FINISH ALL OF THE THINGS.”

“And the next time one of you has the kind of spare cash around to take a prancercise vacation to a tropical island, for the love of all that is holy please bring me with you.”

It sounds to me like the author would really like to make time for herself. It also sounds like she might want to take a trip to the islands. After repeatedly urging her readers to “do whatever the fuck you want”… why doesn’t she just *actually* do what the fuck she wants? This piece came off as bitter and close-minded.

Glad I found your blog! I am new to the whole blogging thang, but I am pretty experienced at losing weight….126 lbs and counting. Naturally. And I get what you are saying. For a long time I cared so much about what other people thought about me. I thought I would already have to look like a super model before I started working out, and certainly so if I did it in public! I came to learn that I am only in competition wit myself. I do not need to compare my success and failures to other’s success and failures. Won’t make me a better person either way.

Brilliant piece once again! I’ve stopped looking at these pictures of people living happy, healthy lives and taking it to heart or feeling guilty because I’m not there. Sometimes a picture is just a picture. – https://kaleidoscopeofdreamsblog.wordpress.com

What does it mean that none of those inspirational bingo items make me feel bad? I think the perfect people/perfect place things can be silly, but I still like looking at beautiful pictures when they pop up in my feed. I don’t feel guilty or less than….occasionally a bit envious and frequently I shake my head because I know how posed most of those pictures are…but what the hell–none of it has to do with who I am.

I came home from a party where everyone was watching. Now i have a huge headache . Thanks for this , i have to book a photographer for my next trip and think of my power pose. Can we have more articles like this?0

Hi Katherine! We lost touch long ago, but I lived next door to you in Mulledy Hall freshman year of college. I don’t think we ever really knew each other, probably in part because I struggled with crippling depression for most of college and missed out on getting to know a lot of good people. You seem cool, and I wish I had known you.

Anyway, I’m a working mom now, and I got really sick of looking at posts where friends describe their busy days of going to the gym and meal prepping. I remembered this post, and googled it, and it made me laugh.

A lot of what you write makes me laugh really hard. You’re great at what you do. An unsolicited suggestion: spend some time with people who have served in the military, ask them about the experiences that have made them who they are, and absorb how they communicate. Then communicate back.